Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. - C. S. Lewis
How important is Christian faith for
you?
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2 Corinthians 11:1-11
Psalm 111:1b-2, 3-4, 7-8 Matthew 6:7-15
Jesus said to his disciples:
"In praying, do not babble like the
pagans,
who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
"This is how you are to pray: 'Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive
us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.' "If you forgive others their transgressions,
your heavenly Father
will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others,
neither will your Father forgive your transgressions."
Reflection on the Scriptures
The Lord’s Prayer can function as a mantra for Christians. When we internalize this prayer, it shapes our entire life: our beliefs, our behavior, our whole relationship with God and with one another. If
we pray it constantly, it becomes the heartbeat of our lives. We will not be drawn away by those who come, as Paul says, “preaching another Jesus than the one we preached.” We will be open to those whose Christian beliefs and prayer may differ from ours. The simple model of this prayer leads us to greater unity with Christ, with our Creator and with other Christians. - by Rev. John Shea, S.J.
The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, by James Arraj
https://innerexplorations.com/catchtheomor/resurrecion.htm Inner Growth Publications, 2007.
Chapter 4: The Resurrection of Jesus Space and the Resurrection Body What we are dealing with, then, is a real body which has
become a supradimensional body, and what makes this difficult to understand is that we are convinced that the more physically solid something is, the more real it is, while in actual fact the less physically solid something is, if that is due to a higher intensity of being, the more real it is. A body is solid not because it is composed of some sort of core of matter that makes it to be real so that the differences between things are more superficial than the matter within them. Things are not
real because they contain some kind of core of prime matter, either. Rather we could say the human soul is more real than the body and contains it, and in containing it gives it new qualities, and a transformed soul will give the body qualities it did not possess before, one of which is a transcendence in regard to place.61 . . . But what happens when we die? . . . We saw before how some theologians seemed to argue that at death the identity
of the body resides in the spiritual soul because it is the form of the body, and the resurrection can take place at death when the spiritual soul reinforms prime matter and creates a new body. But this kind of approach rests on a view of prime matter that has been carried forward from Aristotle and the Middle Ages and not sufficiently critically examined. This view of prime matter is defective, and therefore the conception of the resurrection of the body based on it needs revision. Indeed,
while prime matter is invoked, the driving force of such conceptions appears more a desire to avoid a crude, physical view of the resurrection. While it is true and important to say that the spiritual soul is the form of the body, and therefore the ultimate guarantee of the identity of the body so that since the spiritual soul is immortal this vital dimension of the body’s identity is never lost, we should not use this as a way to negate the reality of the body, itself. Because the spiritual
soul is the form of the body, we can say that even after death it maintains a relationship to the body, but why can’t we turn around and say that in some way the body has a relationship to the soul? At the moment of death the body is separated from the spiritual soul elevated by grace, and from the entity of union that had elevated the animal soul. These losses upset its equilibrium and it begins to fall apart. It is as if the animal soul has lost its vital center which is the entity of union that it received by being united with the spiritual soul, and it begins to disintegrate and initiate a cascade of disintegration that extends to the lower stages of being that
it had incorporated into itself. The animal soul’s loss of its entity of union leaves it not neutral as if it could somehow continue to lead a purely animal existence, but disoriented and deprived. We could say that just as the soul as the form of the body could be said to long for the body, so, too, the body could be said to long for the completion and elevation it has lost.
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